When Salazar toured the same area Wednesday, he saw a dramatically different scene: Thick oyster grass and other marsh plants now blanketed the same territory that was mostly covered by 3 feet of water.

"It demonstrates how when you work at something together, you can make something happen," said Salazar, who was visiting the Gulf Coast region to meet with area residents and visit the refuge as one of his final acts as secretary of the interior. "People used to say we could not restore the marshlands or the wetlands of the Mississippi River Delta."

But Salazar said the joint federal-state wetlands protection initiative that began here in 2007 is a model for continued efforts to restore the Gulf Coast, after decades of erosion and negligence that preceded even Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the oil spill in 2010.

At the $21 million, 600-acre Goose Bayou Point Platte project, sediment from Lake Pontchartrain was delivered to the area, allowing mother plants to take root in the region. The invasive species quickly spread, helping to insulate the shoreline from storm surge erosion, and providing an abundant habitat for geese, mallards and other waterfowl.

Refuge manager Danny Breaux said the project was "a shot in the arm" for the area, creating not just new marsh but also encouraging more people to explore the area.

Garret Graves, the chair of Louisiana's coastal protection and restoration authority, noted that the state is still losing coastline at a devastating pace: some 16 square miles each year.

All along the Gulf Coast, states are preparing to spend what could add up to billions of dollars tied to the 2010 oil spill - including potential Clean Water Act fines that could be decided as the result of an ongoing lawsuit against BP in New Orleans.